By Craig Karmin
Blackstone Group LP has agreed to pay more than $1.2 billion to
a consortium led by Paulson & Co. for three large hotels in
Orlando, Fla., and Scottsdale, Ariz., according to people familiar
with the matter.
The hotels combined have more than 2,500 rooms, about 472,000
square feet of meeting space and 54 holes of golf on 800 acres, a
person familiar with the properties said. The hotels are the Ritz
Carlton and J.W. Marriott in Orlando, and the J.W. Marriott in
Scottsdale.
For Blackstone, the acquisition of three hotels that cater to
group travel is a bet that this market segment, which has lagged
behind others, will grow more rapidly in the years ahead.
The sale by Paulson & Co., Winthrop Realty Trust and Capital
Trust Inc., a lender acquired by Blackstone that is now called
Blackstone Mortgage Trust, marks the end of the CNL Hotels &
Resorts portfolio of hotels the partners took over through a 2011
foreclosure.
In 2013, Paulson and its partners sold four other hotels from
the CNL portfolio, including the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix and
the Claremont resort in Berkeley, Calif., to a Singapore
sovereign-wealth fund for $1.5 billion. Another hotel, the Doral
resort in Miami, was sold to Donald Trump.
Cap Trust and Winthrop were original lenders to the Morgan
Stanley real-estate fund that owned CNL. Paulson bought about $150
million of debt for around $10 million in 2010, say people,
familiar with matter.
Write to Craig Karmin at craig.karmin@wsj.com
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